Numb
by ZazamPOW
Summary: Going from rookie cop to world's greatest super-agent in only six years isn't without a cost.
"...Leon?"

 _The room was dark. A sole voice raised from the shadows._

 _"What. Is. Your. Name."_

"...Leon, what happened to you?"

 _Hands smashed the desk in front of him, hot and bitter breath now against his cheeks._

 _"Soldier! Repeat your name, NOW!"_

"Leon, please answer me..."

 _His jaw was clenched by hands he could not see._

 _" **SOLDIER!** "_

"LEON!"

The fair-haired man lowered his gaze, suddenly staring back at Sherry, sharply. He had such a bad habit of doing that. Just gazing off into the clouds, looking for or at only God knew what. Sometimes it took quite a bit to jar him back into reality, but without the zombie apocalypse descending around him, Sherry found it quite difficult to get him to focus on her for more than five minutes.

"Leon, are you going to answer me?"

The sharpness of his look suddenly faltered then, as he cocked his head to one side.

"What?"

Sherry sighed. It was as if he had just noticed her presence at that very moment.

"Leon, I'm trying to talk to you."

"Well don't let me stop you." And just like that, his hands folded into his pockets as his gaze diverted back to the clouds above. Sherry's nostrils flared.

"HEY!" That immediately jolted his attention back down, and Sherry's cheeks just as quickly rushed with red, and her own eyes widened as she realized just how loudly she had screamed that. She looked around. All the rescue workers had stopped to stare at her.

"Did you want to talk to me or the whole platoon?" Leon asked, leaning forward with the faintest hint of a smirk on his lips. Sherry frowned.

"You weren't nearly this aggravating back in the day." She mumbled as she crossed her arms and looked to the ground, not daring to meet the scrutinizing eyes of anyone watching her. After some silent moments passed, the rescue workers eventually plodded back to their previous tasks.

Leon briefly considered making some comment about how she was far from the first woman to call him aggravating, but decided to hold it in for now. Sherry wasn't the kind of girl he wanted to talk like that with anyway, so instead he merely shrugged his shoulders, and looked on at the recovery effort.

Hundreds of TerraSave and BSAA employees were crowding the remains of Tatchi, trying to recover what they could and locate any survivors. The TerraSave members were all accompanied by an armed BSAA escort, for the purpose of expunging any remaining infected.

The sun was bright and the sky was blue on this third day of the operation, but the horizon was tainted with the image of collapsed buildings and debris in the distance, leftovers from the chaos which had erupted not a week prior. Leon and Sherry stood around a crater, surrounded by rescue workers and medical tents and hazmat suit operators. Claire was around somewhere, coordinating a section of the operation, and Sherry had donated her services for the day to help out.

She glanced up, not quite recovered from the embarrassment of her uncontrolled outburst yet, but curious to see how he was reacting. When it became clear that he _wasn't_ reacting, she sighed once again and decided to make the first move.

"Y'know," She began without looking up. "Ever since Claire joined TerraSave, I've kinda made myself something of an honorary member. I like to help out whenever I can, but..." She paused, thinking about how she could keep this next part from sounding insensitive.

"I never expected to find you here too."

"What can I say, I'm a charitable guy." Leon replied. He didn't even look at her, like these stupid one-liners were just his automated responses without actually having to think about what the person said. Sherry didn't know if she should sigh or scream again.

"Uh, y'know," She looked off to the side, hands nervously rubbing up and down her arms. "I don't get the chance to see you as often as I do Claire, ever since... Raccoon." She paused a moment, gauging his reaction out of the corner of her eye, and once more seeing none. "But I... I know what you did for me."

At this, finally, the Government agent turned his head down, eyes perplexed in a mixture of surprise and apprehension. It was by far the most emotion she'd seen from him in over a decade, and she couldn't help but chuckle to herself.

"Did I just catch the great Leon Kennedy off guard?" She spoke.

Leon immediately opened his mouth to reply, but no words came out. For a long moment, he just stood there, his mouth hung open like a student who was asked a question he didn't know the answer to. Finally, just when Sherry thought she had made a mistake giving him a taste of his own sarcastic medicine, he smiled.

"I guess you did." Came his own chuckled response, and then she chuckled too. For a few long seconds, they stood there, awkwardly half-looking at each other and giggling. Sherry enjoyed it.

"But Sherry," His sharp reply cut straight into their moment of laughter. "What did you mean?"

Sherry frowned. Suddenly she felt scrutinized. She turned her face away when she spoke.

"I just... I know about the deal you made. When we were picked up by those agents, after Raccoon." A second passed then with no words. Leon tilted his head as he analyzed her back. She seemed to be trembling. Then all at once, Sherry spun around into Leon's face, her eyes wide and shining with a sudden outburst of uncontrolled emotion. "I know how you sold your life to them to protect me, how they basically blackmailed you into working for them so that I would be safe! And that's why we've rarely ever seen each other, even in our civilian lives. You're too valuable to them, and I..." Leon's mouth once again hung open, Sherry's eyes staring at his as she laid it all out. Suddenly, she retracted her gaze and turned back to the floor.

"My presence was considered a risk... to your cooperation. So they've always kept us from seeing each other, from interacting. Last week, when you and your partner helped Jake and I against that monster, that was a complete accident. You were off the books. Just like you are now."

Sherry spied at him from the corner of her eye. He seemed to be considering what she said for a moment. Just when he opened his mouth to reply, she instantly snapped around and held one finger up.

"No." She spoke flatly. "No stupid jokes, Leon."

So once again the Government agent was left staring with his mouth open. He thought to himself for a few seconds, trying to piece together what the hell was suddenly going on. When he couldn't, he just sighed and looked to the floor.

" _Women_." He muttered to himself.

Sherry sighed too, at his lack of reply. She cupped her face in one hand with the other folded across her chest. Suddenly she was tired.

"You've changed so much..." She whispered to herself, and at this Leon looked up.

"Is that what this is about?"

Sherry looked at him. She knew this man. Regardless of how little time they've actually spent together in the grand scheme of things, and regardless of how different he has become, Sherry knew this man at his core. She knew the sharpness in his eyes when he was serious. And she knew, that he didn't have that sharpness right now.

"You're not taking me seriously..." She sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose.

"I'm just a little confused." Leon started. "Raccoon was over 15 years ago. I could say that you've changed a lot as well."

"That's not what I mean!" Sherry suddenly exclaimed as she stomped her foot. "Just... Just tell me what you were doing a minute ago. I've been trying to talk to you all day but you're too busy staring off into the clouds! What were you doing?"

Leon's eyes narrowed at this, then he shrugged.

"Thinking."

Shery groaned loudly. This was like a merry-go-round, just going in circles.

"Thinking about _what_?" She huffed.

Leon regarded her for a moment. His expression shifted, a change so subtle that you'd have to examine him with a microscope in order to see. He was good at hiding his emotions. But Sherry saw it.

"About my training." He finally answered. This wasn't what Sherry had expected.

"About... y-your training...?" She stammered.

"Yeah." Leon responded. Seconds passed.

"...What _about_ your training, Leon?" Sherry asked, her perplexment quickly making way for more frustration.

'Sherry." Leon now turned fully towards her, finally, for the first time, looking right at her. The sharpness was there.

"When we were picked up, after Raccoon, it's true that the Government blackmailed me into working for them. But those were difficult times, the whole bio-terror thing was brand new, and of course it kicked off with the devastation of an entire city. What I'm trying to say is..." Leon paused. And at that moment, Sherry's perplexment returned. The great Leon Kennedy, the cool, ever aloof super-agent... stumbling over his words? Unsure of what to say?

Leon seemed to realize this as well and darted his eyes to the side, quietly groaning. "What I'm trying to say is, I was the prototype for a new kind of soldier. Nobody had any type of training for a bio-terror outbreak, and that's why Raccoon fell. They said that I had the kind of experience they were looking for, which is why I was chosen. But still, nobody really knew _how_ to train me to fight monsters and viral infections."

Leon suddenly turned away then, showing his back to Sherry.

"Nowadays we have the BSAA, TerraSave, even those FBC rookies, all dedicated towards fighting bio-terror. We have systems, laws in place. But back then, nobody knew what was going on. Nobody knew what to do, so... Basically I went through some pretty extreme conditioning in order to reach the point I'm at now. Mental, and physical. I had to be... efficient."

Sherry slowly approached her friend's back, unsure of what to say, how to react.

"Leon...?"

"It's no big deal." He interrupted, still not facing her. "Rookie cop to world's best agent in six years, it makes sense that my training had to be special. But, they figured that I could never reach this point if I was still traumatized from what happened in Raccoon... A tool has no room for feelings. To take on my kind of missions, I couldn't ever be afraid. I always needed to have a clear head. So, that's where the mental training came in..."

Once again he trailed off, Sherry staring at his back, still straight and rigid, betraying no feeling.

"You've become numb." She placed a hand on his shoulder. "To emotion."

"...I guess that's a good way to put it." He stated flatly.

Sherry thought back to the man she met 15 years ago. The scared, naive police officer who just wanted to help people. He had seemed so in tune with empathy, hiding his fears for the sake of her own. But he was inexperienced, and even as a child, she knew he was doing it very badly. It was difficult to relate that man, to the man he had become, but Sherry thought about her own experiences in Raccoon, and then her resulting time in Government custody. She liked to think that she had become _more_ empathic as a result of her trauma, but she could certainly see how someone would go the other way,

"Leon, I..." She started. "I understa-" A massive crash cut her off, the whole area rumbling below her feet. The duo looked to their left, a group of Bloodshot zombies had erupted from a sealed basement, the BSAA was already opening fire but they were quickly being overwhelmed.

" _Shit!_ " Sherry screamed in her head. " _I-I didn't bring a gun to the cleanup effort!_ " She darted her eyes, looking for anything to use as a weapon. A wooden board. A rock.

" _That's it?_ " She screamed mentally. " _Would it be too much to ask for just a metal pipe or some-_ "

"Here!" She turned, and Leon was tossing her a pistol, his already in hand and clenched tight as he ran toward the horde. Sherry caught the weapon on reflex, fumbling it in her hands before she could properly react, but by that point, Leon was already pulling off shots at the incoming monsters.

"SHERRY!" He called back without looking. "TO YOUR LEFT!"

She turned, and there was a Bloodshot leaping at a TerraSave employee. Sherry drew and fired three shots, all impacting the monster's skull in less than a second. The monster's corpse landed on top of the woman, spattering her in blood and other fluids. Sherry froze for a moment, but the woman she quickly crawled out, looked at Sherry, and voiced a silent 'Thank you' with her fear-ridden eyes before running off.

"Bu-But," Sherry stammered. " _How did he know?_ "

"SHERRY!" Another call. "FOLLOW ME!" And Sherry watched as Leon threw himself at the horde of monsters, suddenly taking the front-lines and pushing his way into the basement. Everybody else was set on running away, but Leon was running forward, set on exterminating the threat so that nobody else would be in danger. And despite the grim chaos that had suddenly erupted around them, in spite of the fact that Leon had just urged her to follow him into a dark basement very likely crawling with monsters, Sherry suddenly found herself smiling.

Regardless of how little time they've actually spent together in the grand scheme of things, and regardless of how different he has become, Sherry knew this man at his core. At his most basic, innate instincts. She had seen this man at the absolute limits of human desperation, in a city where hope had been entirely replaced by fear, and she had seen how he still protected her. Her _and_ Claire. Back when she was just a little girl. And regardless of how much time has passed, how much has changed, whatever vague, unidentified "conditioning" that they had put him through in order to expunge his trauma, Sherry still knew one thing about Leon Scott Kennedy; he was determined to protect people, no matter what. That's what he lived for. And now, it would be what she lived for. In order to repay her debt to him.


End file.
